‘Supernatural’ Review: “Bitten”

‘Supernatural’ season 8 scares up found footage of its fourth episode of the season “Bitten,” as the boys uncover a documentary of three college students coming to grips with a series of werewolf attacks, while Sam and Dean investigate the goings-on from afar..

Last weeks’s ‘Supernatural’ episode “Heartache” saw Sam and Dean investigating a pair of mysterious deaths to find that a sports star may have made a deadly deal for immortality with a Mayan god, and accidentally unleashed a curse on others. So, what does the latest season 8 episode bring? Will the Winchesters finally be able to rid the world of Crowley’s demonic scum, once and for all? Are we still even following that?

Read on for your in-depth recap of everything you need to know about ‘Supernatural’ season 8 episode 4, “Bitten!”

Sam and Dean burst in to a blood-spattered home, not finding any immediate danger, but with a number of bodies lying around. Curiously, they discover a laptop with instructions to play awaiting them, beginning with a message saying that things weren’t supposed to end this way…

Sam and Dean begin the video, which features a scrawny college student named Brian, and his more well-built friend Michael. The boys play around with their new cameras in a coffee shop, while a girl sitting with her friends across the way catches Brian’s eye. Intrigued by their filming, the girl comes over with a camera of her own and seems to have an immediate chemistry with Mike, to Brian’s disappointment.

Over time, Michael becomes very tight-knit with Kate, while all three continue shooting and Brian looks for a topic for his movie. One day, Michael sleeps through a class lecture while Brian zooms in on a curious pin on his professor’s lapel. After class, a rude student named Scott brushes past the trio, and he follows them to see that someone was murdered near the campus. Who should arrive then to investigate the attack, but Sam and Dean Winchester!

That night, Michael and Brian continue horsing around with their cameras, catching a bit of Sam and Dean interviewing a suspect about the attack. When Sam and Dean depart, Michael and Brian train their cameras on the boy from earlier aggressively making out with a girl under the bleachers, who grows frustrated by his advances, storming off. Michael trips a trash can, alerting Scott to their presence before he gives chase.

Brian and Michael are separated in the chase, as Michael hears a creature in the woods growling. He finds himself dragged off and mauled, and Brian soon after finds his unconscious and bleeding body. Brian drags Michael back to the house to find a worried Kate, but Michael’s bloody injuries seem to vanish almost immediately.

Shortly after recovering, Michael finds his strength exponentially increased, wondering what he could have been bitten by, as Brian resolves to make his friend the subject of the movie. Brian asks Mike to have the creature bite him too, tired of being a weakling, but Michael strongly objects to the idea. Some time later, Sam and Dean drop by the house still in their FBI guises, but the three deny knowing anything about the recent attacks. Outside, Kate overhears Sam and Dean talking about last week’s events with a Mayan God.

That night, Mike awakens and inspects himself in the mirror, watching in horror as his pupils dilate, claws extend from his fingers and fangs from his mouth, suddenly becoming ravenously hungry. Unsatisfied by the food in the house, he heads out. The camera perspective picks up from Scott’s vantage point, out with his friends looking to protect people from the attacks, before running into Michael with his late-night meals. Taunting him, Scott chases Michael down, until Michael wolfs out and attacks him.

Back at the house, Brian and Kate talk before Michael suddenly appears covered in blood. Showering, he admits to having killed Scott in a fury, as the others note the claws present on his video footage. The next day, Brian and Kate visit the crime scene to see Scott dead, and hear Sam and Dean learning the the boy’s heart was ripped out and eaten. Brian confronts Michael about it back at home, to which Michael responds by hurling him across a room, while Kate defends her boyfriend’s actions. Brian insists to Kate that they need to call the police, but Kate refuses to do that to someone she loves, a sentiment that nearly brings Brian to tears.

Stalking Sam and Dean, Michael and Kate don’t learn much from their talks with police, but find that similar murders took place 10 years ago. Brian finds the pair via their phone GPS, giving them an idea of how to exploit Brian’s hacking abilities. The trio spy on Sam and Dean that night at a restaurant, who reason that the attacks could be coming from a pureblood werewolf, one who arrived years ago but has avoided feeding on humans until now. While Kate still refuses to turn in Michael, Brian finds something hidden in the woods on previous recordings, and heads off by himself to find a lapel pin buried in the dirt.

Returning home, Brian shows Kate and Michael footage of him confronting the college professor, who under duress reveals himself to be the real wolf, one who set up Michael to be a patsy to Sam and Dean. Brian has the professor reluctantly bite him, becoming a werewolf as well, as hidden camera footage later reveals that Sam and Dean busted in to slay the professor.

Realizing that Sam and Dean will likely trace the camera feed, Michael confronts Brian, who seems to be going insane with jealous rage and ready to kill for Kate. Brian and Michael wolf out and come to blows, in a struggle that ends with Brian stabbing his friend with a silver knife. Kate attempts to kill Brian for his actions, but Brian bites her too hoping she’ll come around to his side of things. In the bathroom, the change slowly takes hold of Kate, who fools Brian for a moment before wolfing out and killing him in turn.

Kate cleans up the scene a bit, and explains to the camera that the three of them weren’t always monsters, and that she plans to leave forever, eating only animal hearts in the future. She finishes the film, and begs Sam and Dean to give her a chance.

Back in the real world, Sam and Dean remain stunned by what they’ve seen, but ultimately resolve to give Kate a shot to keep her word. The brothers depart the scene, as elsewhere Kate walks off into the sunset.

After last week's fairly pedestrian outing, 'Supernatural' roars back in a big way with "Bitten," turning out to be one of the fresher and more interesting episodes in years, in spite of its topical premise. Fans of the series will almost certainly bemoan that we don't see much of Sam or Dean, and nothing happens with the over-arching plot, but an intriguing format punctuated by well-drawn characters make "Bitten" likely the most entertaining episode of the season to date.

Did you get your fill of spooky ‘Supernatural’ action? What did you think about the found footage episode? Join us next week for an all-new episode recap of ‘Supernatural’ thriller “Blood Brother” on The CW!